


Everybody Knows The Plague Is Coming

by orphan_account



Series: The Sun Will Set Without Our Assistance [3]
Category: Bullshit - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-03-19 06:40:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13698969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Sometimes the world almost ends and sometimes it has to be save it. Sometimes Apocalypse isn't too far away.





	1. Bling!

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "Everybody Knows" by Sigrid.

Roxy and Irma had found nothing, other than a series of labyrinth like tunnels that seemed to lead nowhere. Walking through them was exhausting and almost pointless, everywhere they went there was nothing. Irma wasn’t much of a conversationalist, walking silently with Roxy through the halls.

 

“I… can’t feel Phoebe,” Irma said, she looked confused, almost broken. “I can’t feel her.”

 

“Is it possible that she’s y’know offline,” Roxy asked.

 

“You really don’t understand telepathic powers at all, do you? They don’t work that way. Every second of every day I’m linked with my sisters! Even when they don’t want me to feel what they’re feeling I know they’re there! They’re always there,” Irma said.

 

“Okay, okay. Let’s go find them. Can you find Micah and Roxy?” Roxy asked. “Focus on them. You said Micah’s mind feels weird? Try to find that.”

 

Irma placed a finger on her temple, pressing pressure into it. Her eyes glowed, light escaping through her eyelids. She didn’t say anything, her face screwing up in confusion.

 

“I… I can't find anything. I can’t see anything. I have no idea where anything is. I can’t find Molly… Wait… This is weird. I found Micah. He feels small and faint, but I found him,” Irma said.

 

“Okay! Okay! Let’s go find them,” Roxy said. “Lead the way.”

 

“Let me get in contact with Celeste, let me find her,” Irma said. For a second her eyes glowed bright white and then they calm down, returning to their usual brown color. “Celeste said the same.”

 

Roxy nods. “Hey, if you have something of someone’s does it help you find them?”

 

“I guess? It can help sometimes, what do you have?” Irma asked.

 

“He gave me his sweatshirt before we came in because I was complaining about being cold,” Roxy said, shrugging off the Jean Grey School sweatshirt she was wearing and handing it to Irma.

 

Irma took it carefully, brushing her hands across it like it’s made of some fine silk. She screwed up her face in something akin to confusion before she closed her eyes.

 

“Found him. He’s somewhere fancy… I don’t know where though,” Irma said. “I can’t figure out anything else. Here I’ll link us all.”

 

Psychic links, Roxy found out, were the weirdest feeling ever. Feeling other people in your brain, even if they were only purposeful thoughts, didn’t quite feel real. She could hear Victor and Dallas’s questions, the background noise of Roxy and Mindee talking, it was unreal, inhuman.

 

_ I think we found some sort of concert hall,  _ Victor said, thought, something. It was confusing, but what Roxy understood was that he wanted her to hear it.

 

“What do you mean?” Roxy asked.

 

“You don’t have to talk out loud,” Mindee said.

 

“Oh,” Roxy said before repeating it, only thinking as loud as she could.

 

_ There’s a lot of people here. Celeste is making it so we’re not seen. There’s a  _ lot  _ of people here, _ Roxy was pretty sure it was Dallas this time.

 

_ We’ll meet you,  _ Mindee said. Mindee started moving, following where she felt her sister.

 

The idle chit chat in her head felt crushing, if Roxy even thought too hard everyone would hear it, unlike with talking there was no filter between her thoughts and what everyone heard. She kept her mind focused so there wouldn’t be anything awkward heard.

 

This time they knew where they were going, the endless wandering they’d done early was gone. It was replaced with a certain amount of certainty because Mindee was tracking a familiar mind, something she knew as well as herself.

 

“They can’t hear us if we talk out loud,” Mindee said. “If you want to talk.”

 

“Why could you feel Micah’s mind and not Molly or your sister’s?” Roxy asked. “If you know.”

 

“Either they’re dead or very powerfully psychically shielded. Whoever shielded them probably figured out Micah’s mind is so incomprehensible that they didn’t figure it was worth it.”

 

“What do you mean?” Roxy asked.

 

“I guess the best way to put it is most people minds are centralized. They’re interconnected and they make sense. Micah’s is so decentralized even attempting to read it is like trying to make sense of a book with so many missing pages it’s incomprehensible. So they didn’t shield him and that’s the weakness in their armor,” Irma smiled wide and bright. “Probably doesn’t make sense if you’re not a telepath.”

 

“Yeah, it doesn’t quite make sense,” Roxy said. “But it’s not the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.”

 

_ Guys! There’s something weird going on. You should really hurry up,  _ Roxy still hadn’t quite gotten used to the sounds of other people in her head, especially if it was Dallas’s voice. It felt weirdly personal.

 

“You’ve been training, right? Cuz let’s start running.”

 

* * *

 

The first thing Roxy noticed was it looked like a colosseum. People were crowded on seats going up the walls, talking in hushed tones that combined into an almost deafening amount of noise.

 

“I present to you,” came a man’s voice. Roxy felt every part of his voice reverberated through her. “The gods of a new age.”

 

Suddenly the stadium shook. It was something that Roxy didn’t know if there was anything to compare it to, not like an earthquake. Dallas fell on his face and Victor jumped onto the nearest wall, hissing like an irate cat.

 

“What the fuck just happ-“ Dallas asked.

 

“I present our lord, Apocalypse,” the man said.

 

“Oh shit,” Roxy said.

 

Apocalypse had a charismatic energy to him, sort of like one of the television preachers on at 2 am. The people hung on his every word, his presence seemingly making them come to life. It reminded her vaguely of the televangelists she’d seen on late night tv. There was an electric quality to his words that she couldn’t quite place her finger on.

 

“I present my new horsemen, my newest disciples,” he said.

 

“Famine,” Phoebe’s platinum blonde hair was unmistakable, even from afar. 

 

After a moment a girl appeared, Roxy didn’t quite know who she was, but she could assume she was Jackie, “Pestilence.”

 

“War,” Molly emerged from a cocoon of flames, her hair expertly braided, even from far away Roxy could see her eyes were alit with something she couldn’t quite place. For a moment Roxy felt her blood boil.

 

Roxy opened her mouth to yell, to charge in, to do something, only to find Dallas’ hand over her mouth. For a second she kind of wanted to lick his hand, the normal human reaction to having anyone stick their hand over your mouth.

 

“Roxy, don’t. You could give us all away,” Dallas said.

 

Roxy carefully closed her mouth, glaring as Dallas carefully pulled his hand away.

 

“Finally, Death,” purple energy ricocheted throughout the theater. Micah looked more put together than Roxy had ever seen him and the usually dull glow of his scars and freckles were now almost blinding.

 

“We’re screwed,” Roxy said.

 

No one needed to respond for Roxy to know she was right.


	2. Spectre

“My son, find the interlopers,” Apocalypse said, placing a hand on Micah’s shoulder. He smiled at Micah and for a second Dallas’ heartbroke, he knew how much Micah wanted a whole family. He saw how happy Micah looked, how overjoyed he was at simply being caller Apocalypse’s son. The change in his body language was minor, but more than enough for Dallas to notice.

 

“Let’s get out of here,” Victor said, he sounded sullen and heart broken in a way Dallas had never heard him before.

 

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s leave. Roxy, we have to leave,” Dallas said, carefully grabbing her shoulder. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes flashed with something, a recognition of the fact that maybe they were gone forever.

 

* * *

 

“This is such a stupid idea,” Dallas said, banging his head against the wheel of his car.

 

“We might have to give up, contact the X-Men and let someone else solve this mess,” Victor said.

 

“Can you guys imagine how much trouble we’d get in if we called the X-Men? We made a stupid call and it’s our job to clean it up,” Roxy said, gesturing wildly, narrowly missing clocking one of the Cuckoos in the head.

 

“Roxy, let’s think about this strategically. Could any of us take Micah? Even together without exploiting some emotional weakness of his. If I tried to figure out how to beat Micah honestly the best idea I could come up with is yelling at him until he cried and I don’t think that applies,” Dallas felt like every part of him was exploding. They’d gotten themselves into a stupid mess and he had no idea how to get out of it.

 

Roxy stood up, leaning over Victor before beginning to root around in the glove box. She finally found what she was looking for, producing Micah’s phone with a smile.

 

“Knew the dumbass wouldn’t bring it with him,” Roxy said. “His password is his Mom’s birthday.”

 

“Is anyone gonna bring it up that it’s kinda weird Roxy knows his password?” Victor asked.

 

“I play Candy Crush on his phone because my phone is out of storage. Anyways. Here’s his contacts. Other than the adult X-Men we have our classmates, Jackie’s mother, X-Factor Investigations’ hotline, Magneto, and someone named Tommy. Who do we take our chances with?” Roxy asked.

 

“I think that’s Tommy Shepherd. A. K. A. Speed A. K. A. that dude who blew up his school in New Jersey a few years back,” Victor said, browsing through his phone before presenting a news story with a triumphant aha. “Let’s call him.”

 

The phone rang three times before Tommy picked it up.

 

“Heyyo, glo-stick. What’s up?” Tommy said, his voice a blur between the combination of what Dallas thought was talking around his food and the fact that his voice seemed to run at the speed of light.

 

“Uh, we’re not Micah. Actually that’s why we’re calling. Micah got turned into a Horsemen of Apocalypse and we need help saving the world,” Dallas said.

 

There was a pause as Tommy seemingly swallowed his food.

 

“So you need my help and experience,” Tommy said.

 

Roxy sighed, mouthing no at Dallas.

 

“Yes. Can you do us a solid?” Dallas asked.

 

“Yeah, I guess. Be there in 5,” Tommy said before abruptly hanging up the phone.

 

“You think the X-Men will go any easier on us if we come to them with a solved problem rather than an active disaster?” Victor asked, breaking the awkward silence that had fallen over the car.

 

“Honestly? Probably not,” Roxy said. “We should just accept we’ll be screwed over for at least 3 months.”   
  


There was a second of silence, followed by a woosh and the sound of shattering glass before Speed appeared, dust settling around him only to reveal him like a mirage. Surprisingly it only took 5 seconds for him to ruin the moment by yelling that he was here while tapping on the half broken window.

 

“Hi, we’re Micah’s friends,” Victor said, smiling shyly and waving.

 

Roxy shoved his shoulder, “Stop being stupid and gay. This is an actual emergency. Anyways, I’m made of diamond which gives me super strength and durability. They’re a psychic hivemind,” she gestured vaguely to Irma and Celeste. “He’s a lizard. Super strength, enhanced abilities, the works. Also Vic can stick to walls. And Dallas turns into a shadow with golden eyes who can lift a semi-truck over his head and can’t be hurt.”

 

“I’m fast and if I vibrate objects super fast the molecules destabilize and blow up,” Speed’s voice was matter the fact and monotone. Gone was the earlier boisterous tone.

 

“Okay, let’s kick some ass. Cuckoos? Can you two create a map of the inside of the building by combining our memories? We need to know our way around.” For a second Dallas was surprised, Roxy had switched from the shell shocked state she’d been in minutes ago to starting to get shit done. She had seemingly turned off her emotions and she knew what needed to be done and she was doing it. “Speed? How are you at distractions?”   
  
Tommy’s lips quirked up at the edges before a grin split his face, “Me? I can be as distracting as you need.”   
  
“Good. Cuckoos give him whatever map you have when you’ve got it and I want you to hit the city. Stay away from civilians, but make a lot of noise. Apocalypse will move his horsemen over to you so you start playing the world’s most important game of cat and mouse. Remember Micah can sense the electrical impulses in your body so move faster than his reaction time and you should be good. Cuckoos, do you think you could get into Micah’s mind? He’s the only one without psi-shields so he’s our way in,” Roxy paused, taking a breath, the gears in her head seemingly turning.

 

“We need someone to go into Micah’s mind with us. People tend not to react kindly to strangers in their head,” Celeste said.

 

Roxy’s jaw stiffened almost imperceptibly, “I’ll do it. Dallas you’re in charge while I’m in there. You two can do this from up here, right?” The Cuckoos nodded and Roxy rolled up her sleeves, “Okay, let’s start. We’re X-Men right now, but don’t forget, we’re fighting for our friends and for a scared little girl. We’re going to win, we have to.”   
  
Silence fell over everyone, even Speed stopped his nervous fidgeting.

 

“Okay, guys, we’ll work over comms so the Cuckoos can focus. I think Micah stole some before we left,” Dallas rummaged through Micah’s bag before handing out four sets of comms. The cases reminded him vaguely of the boxes people kept retainers in, but he didn’t say anything, merely setting them all on the same channel before handing one to Victor and Tommy and another to Celeste. “Okay, let’s roll out.”   
  


Victor and Tommy nodded walking towards the door.

 

“Be safe,” Dallas said, hugging Roxy tightly, trying to etch the moment into his memory.

 

“You too,” Roxy said.

  
For a moment Dallas felt the same way he’d felt when he’d said goodbye to his mom. 6 years of experience and life melted away, leaving him with the empty feeling that he may never see someone so important to him again. Instead of letting himself cry he forced his tears down, he was in charge, people were relying on him.  _ I can cry later _ , he thought.  _ Now we save our friends _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please comment...


	3. Bling!

Instructions for entering someone else’s mind were surprisingly brief. Roxy assumed she was probably getting an abridged version of the actual instructions because what they told her boiled down to roughly two things.

 

  1. Don’t mess with his mind too much.
  2. Don’t let yourself get lost.



 

After having taken almost two years of telepathic defense classes with Professor Summers-Grey letting someone fully into her mind felt counter-intuitive. It didn’t feel like the small scale psychic attacks Prestige would launch against them, but for a few moment Roxy fought back. She tried to keep the Cuckoos away from her consciousness, away from her secrets and thoughts and everything that made up her. After a moment, for the first time in her life, she stopped fighting. She let herself relax and forget.

 

For a second there was peace, she didn’t feel the tug of every one of her preconceived notions of herself, of her anxieties, and how she always felt she was letting someone down. It was amazing. 

 

It only lasted a second before she was bombarded with noise and chaos. It felt like her head was made of jello, but like the world’s loudest jello. Which she knew didn’t make sense, but it was the only way Roxy could describe what she felt. Eventually the noise faded away and she opened her eyes. She still felt foggy and weird, but she could see where she was. Micah’s mind looked nothing like she’d imagined it would’ve.

 

She’d gone through thousands of possibilities for what his mind would be like, a conspiracy theory string board, a tablet where she could flip through memories like Youtube videos, maybe it’d even look like the Jean Grey School. Instead she was greeted with a shitty apartment building. The walls of the hallway she was in had burn marks running down the walls, the shape of small hands and the level of a toddler. She couldn’t smell a char, so she assumed that it had been there for a while.

 

Carefully she opened one of the doors, letting the new surroundings wash over her. She didn’t know what to expect, it could have been anything, but instead it was her. Not her as she’d been 6 months ago or even a year ago, but her as a little girl. She paused, it wasn’t Micah’s memory, but hers. It took her a second to remember that the Cuckoos had said they’d be combining their minds, that it would make everything easier for her to understand. That probably explained why she was seeing her memories. So she paused for a moment, smiling at herself. She was about six in the memory, reading one of the Magic Tree House books with the private security her father had specifically hired for her after the first kidnapping attempt on her. The memory felt strangely serene. The woman she was reading to had been part nanny part bodyguard and some of her favorite early memories were with her.

 

Still Roxy knew she had a mission so she closed the door and moved down the hallway. She needed to find Micah and talk to him, help talk him down and fix whatever mess they were in. The second room was one of Micah’s memories. He was sitting in a chair in Professor X’s office, he looked about 9 or 8. His hair was it’s trademark purple, bordering just between magenta and deep purple, and his brown eyes stared at the Professor, unblinking.

 

“I don’t like this, my head hurts afterwards,” Micah said, he didn’t look happy. He looked a bit like the creepy kids in every horror movie, his eyes empty and unfeeling.

 

“It’s helping you control your powers,” Professor X said before flipping through a few papers. His tone was the same as a mother pacifying her screaming 6 year old in a grocery store.

 

Micah paused before drawing his legs up to his chest and holding them tight, “Can I leave?”

 

The Professor made a dismissive gesture and Micah gathered his things, stuffing them into an X-Men motif backpack before leaving. His expression remained the same as it’d been when she’d walked in, but the second he saw his brother he put on a facade. A fake smile splitting his face as he told Abram about his day.

 

Roxy left, trying to forgot how empty Micah had looked. She followed the hallway, occasionally poking her head into a room. She saw dozens of Micah and her memories mixed between the rooms. There was the memory of her powers emerging, the moment when she looked into her mirror and seen a monster. She’d screamed for almost a full minute before her parent had rushed in and stopped. Neither of them moved to touch her, to comfort their only daughter. Roxy gingerly touched her cheek, amazed and horrified by herself. It had been the worst days of her life when it’d happened, but the way she’d thought about that day had changed over the years. A week later she’d started her first day at the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters.

 

Next there was Micah’s memory of moving into a new apartment with his brother. Abram bought carry out pizza and let Micah eat more than any 12 year old should be allowed. Despite how unhappy Micah looked Abram kept telling jokes, trying to coax his little brother into some semblance of happiness. Roxy didn’t think that it would happen, by the looks of the memory it had been a month at most since their mom had died. That wasn’t the type of thing that happened and then someone was happy anytime soon after. So carefully Roxy left, closing the door and silently moving on.

 

Finally she came to the end of the hall. The fluorescent lights above her flickered like something out of a low budget science fiction movie. She turned the knob, pausing for a moment before opening the door. She’d been raised on horror movies and every part of her knew that nothing good came from opening the door at the end of the hall, especially if the lights flickered near it. But nonetheless she opened the door only to be greeted by two Micahs. One of them was yelling at the other, calling him a coward, undeserving of the air he breathed, nasty things. The other Micah was silently crying. The angry Micah was glowing, throwing off sparks making him almost impossible to look at.

 

“What the fuck is going on?” Roxy asked.

 

“He refuses to fight back. The death seed splits our mind. He’s… he’s passive! He had the power, the ability to fight back and yet he sits here. We can’t do this unless we do it together!”

 

“Let me talk to him,” Roxy said, before sitting down next to Micah on the floor. This was half of her best friend’s mind that was scared, that wanted nothing more than to shrink into himself and forget anything was happening. She understood the feeling, she understood how hard doing things was, how hard fighting was in a world that wished nothing more than for you to give up.

 

“I’m scared,” Micah said, digging his fingernails into the soft flesh of his arm.

 

“I’m scared too. Micah, if you wanted to you could destroy the whole world. It’s fucked up to think that just because we have the power we should have to fight to save the world, but it’s what’s right. Sometimes I hate the vision that the X Men follow, that if we fight long and hard enough humans will like us. It’s not true, but Micah please fight because if you don’t we’re all going to die. Fight because that’s what your mom and brother did. Micah, fight because Dallas, Victor, Molly, and I need you to fight. This is the only way,” Roxy said. She wasn’t great at comforting people, so much of it relied on touch, on the feeling of skin against skin. Her skin was made of diamond and cut like a knife if touched the wrong way. Almost paradoxically after a moment Micah wiped the tears out of his eyes and nodded.

 

“Okay. I’ll fight back,” Micah said. His voice sounded wet and hopeless, but after a moment he stood up and his powers flared, an explosion of purple light and glowing eyes.

 

For a second Roxy felt like she’d been hung upside down and all the blood was rushing to her head. Then she opened her eyes and looked around, there was Dallas’ shitty car, the frozen grass underneath her, and finally The Cuckoos. Roxy breathed deeply, this was reality. She was no longer in some amalgam of her and Micah’s minds. Strangely she almost missed it there, there was a certain understanding that came in there that she no longer had.

 

“How long has it been?” Roxy asked. She tried to stand up, but she felt light headed so she remained where she’d been.

 

“Three hours,” they said. They were still talking in unison which Roxy tried not to let annoy her, but somehow did.

 

“Well that explains why my foot’s asleep,” she tried to crack a smile only to feel it die on her lips. “What has Dallas said?”

 

“He thinks Micah’s in control now,” one of the Cuckoos said. It was hard to tell who was who when staring at them together. They both had platinum blonde hair and light blue eyes that were almost clear.

 

Roxy nodded, “We should help them. In a minute. Why does that psychic stuff make me feel like this?”

  
“You’re probably not used to it,” one of them said. Roxy found herself agreeing, she wasn’t quite sure how anyone could get used to  _ that _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo comment

**Author's Note:**

> Comment y'all.


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